Captain corelli's mandolin (Captain Corelli's Mandolin (DVD))

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Product:	Captain Corelli's Mandolin (DVD)
Date:	03/02/02 (30 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: story, nicholas cage

Disadvantages: book is better

A good movie, yet one that is unappreciated if I were to judge by the very few reviews I have seen. Too bad since the book has been a runaway best-seller and the film belongs to a minority genre, that of "historical" works which deal with little-known facts in intelligent, well-informed fashion.
Its setting is Cephalonia (the real one, not a studio stand-in), on the Ionian sea. Like all of the isles of Greece it is beautiful it is, but neither made movie-beautiful nor tourist-pretty. The time-span is 1939 through 1943, with a coda set some years after the end of World War II.

Sept. 1, 1939: WWII begins. Oct. 28, 1940: Mussolini's Italy, which had previously occupied Albania, launches the attack on Greece, from Albania. The Italian forces are much larger than the Greek ones and have incomparably more and better weaponry and equipment. November 1940-April 1941. Having heroically counter-attacked the Italians, the Greeks have been pushing them back into Albania. April 6, 1941. Hitler has decided to save face for his Italian allies, comes to their rescue by invading Greece via Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa." Germany attacks/invades Russia. The operation was delayed partly because certain German forces had been previously diverted to Greece. The delay meant fewer good- weather days for the Germans in Russia before the winter of 41 set in savagely and to the detriment of Hitler. July 1943. The Allies invade Sicily. Then, after 5,000 Italians on the island surrender they are killed by the Germans. 3,000 Italians sent by ship to camps in Germany also perish when Allies, unaware of the facts, sink several of those ships.

"Corelli" has much going for it. The performances are very good. The photography is well controlled and lets the beauty of the place speak for itself, without a surcharge of picturesqueness. The focus is on the city of Argostoli, the island's capital which became rubble
after the 1953 earthquake. Using a smaller town, the sets reconstruct beautifully the Italianate architecture of the place. (Cephalonia had been under Venetian rule for three centuries). Good music, very much of its period.

A few speaking parts use Greek actors, but the main roles are with non-Greeks. It is, I admit, a stretch to accept Cage as an Italian and the great John Hurt as a Greek, in spite of their doing yeoman jobs in accent-faking. No such problem with Penelope Cruz who is Spanish and finds the sound of Greek easier to imitate. She also seems convincingly Greek. And it helps that she does not look like a glamorous Hollywood bimbo.
Thanks for reading my opinion on Captain corelli's mandolin.

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